Iorizzo: Twilight League reaches big time

PETE IORIZZO

Published 11:14 pm, Saturday, June 8, 2013

On Sunday, a team from the Albany Twilight League is playing a team from the Cape Cod League, which is widely considered the nation's best summer collegiate league, the June and July home to future major leaguers.

And while the game may sound like something akin to your beer-league softball team getting a chance to play the ValleyCats, there's one key difference: The guys on the Albany Athletics, the Twilight League team, actually think they can win. They can, too.

They're the first ever Twilight League team to play a team from the Cape Cod League, and they see the game against the Falmouth Commodores in Falmouth, Mass., as more than a chance to say they took a few hacks against a pitcher who one day could win a Cy Young Award.

It's more like an opportunity to show that the 83-year-old Twilight League, believed to be the oldest summer baseball league in the country, is so much more than a rec league for men just looking to live out their "Field of Dreams" fantasies.

"This is far from a rec league, far from a beer league," says Joe Altieri, who's been coaching the Albany Athletics for the past 18 years while also working for the state's high school athletic association. "The guys that are here, they take it seriously. They're here to win."

And few teams in Twilight League history have won like the Athletics, who last year were the American Amateur Baseball Congress national champions, thanks to a walk-off home run in the title game in Florida. They're six-time Twilight League champs, too, and you don't win in this league by keeping beer cozies in your equipment bag.

The roster is no cast of old-timers reliving their glory days. Siena's Mike Fish, the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference Player of the Year, is playing with the team. Chris Salamida, the Watervliet native who once was the ace of the ValleyCats' staff, is on the roster, too. They're all profiled in the team's media guide, a glossy magazine.

Though most players on the team have day jobs, they arrive an hour and a half before games, stretching and long-tossing in full uniform, their baseball pants and red jerseys. Every January, Ben Paniccia, who's played with the Athletics since 2006, drags a net into his garage and starts loosening his shoulder for the summer.

"Us older guys, we don't keep coming back here because it's something to do," says Paniccia, an outfielder in his seventh season who works in law enforcement. "We're here to win."

Not every Twilight League team treats weeknights at Bleecker Stadium like they're Game 7 of the World Series, but no one drags out a cooler of Coors Light in the bottom of the third inning, either.

In a storied history so long that the league has seen players fight in wars in both Japan and Iraq, the Twilight League has had 18 players go on to the major leagues.

And even though collegiate leagues have grown in the past decade — the five-year-old Albany Dutchmen, who play in the Perfect Game Collegiate Baseball League, are an example — Twilight League teams continue to attract pro-quality players.

"It's not an old man's league," Altieri says.

Like some of the better Twilight League teams, the Athletics play games against other amateur teams from around the state, to provide even more competition than their 24 league games.

Earlier this week, the Athletics played a squad from Watertown whose No. 9 hitter plays college baseball at Kansas. Altieri had been trying for years to get a game against the best collegiate competition of all, a Cape Cod League team.

"Their pitchers probably all throw 90 miles per hour," Altieri says, "and their hitters probably swing out of their socks. We're humbled by the opportunity."